321–330 of 364 posts
> they’ve found jobs, met mentors and made friends through the community. I am interested in finding a mentor and a supportive community. Is there a forum like this for general public.
Is there a difference between a community for Women vs a community for anybody who wants a civil community?
From the discussion, I gather that women like 'women only' communities primarily because there are no "ill behaved", threatening men that turn away women.
Is there a place for a community for civilized human beings where everyone is included regardless of their gender identity?
I think gender specific communities creates a mono culture and punishes men who are civilized and know how to behave around other gender(s).
The real issue to address is to keep out the unruly crowd - regardless of gender.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(not for me, so I'm not sure how much I could respond to questions) Is Leap for people who are i) female, ii) identify as a woman, or iii) both? I ask because I have a few friends who are biologically female, but genderqueer (by which they mean that they don't prescribe to the cultural stuff that is usually attached to gender). Would this be suitable for them? As a more general note, since this looks to be a communit…
Thank you for asking. iii – My goal is to create an inclusive community. I'd say Leap is suitable for your friend. I am also learning as I go, so would love feedback!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This helped kill my hopes of having a real career at the company and helped me make my peace with just leaving the company shortly thereafter. Merely curious, was the working relationship between the two of you already strained/tense? Said another way, were you already planning to depart from the company before the senior programmer asked you out?
I did not have a working relationship with him. We worked at the same company, but we never worked together. I was already expecting to leave for unrelated reasons. I have a certificate in GIS. In the 5+ years at that company, he was the only person who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it. It never crossed his mind that I might have IT ambitions or that my technical training might have value for the com…
Attractive sexually or intellectually?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(not for me, so I'm not sure how much I could respond to questions) Is Leap for people who are i) female, ii) identify as a woman, or iii) both? I ask because I have a few friends who are biologically female, but genderqueer (by which they mean that they don't prescribe to the cultural stuff that is usually attached to gender). Would this be suitable for them? As a more general note, since this looks to be a communit…
Thank you for asking. iii – My goal is to create an inclusive community. I'd say Leap is suitable for your friend. I am also learning as I go, so would love feedback!
You may have noble intentions, but refusing nearly half the population simply on the basis of their anatomy is not inclusive.
I expect this to be a controversial comment. I might just be overreacting. If you identify as a woman and are interested in joining Leap, please sign up for our beta here. I'm a trans woman who works in tech. I think it's dangerous to open a community for women to people who "identify as women". For one thing, there are plenty of women who do not "identify as women". For instance, older women may not really know what…
>have spent most of their professional lives as men and who have often contributed to exactly the kind of working environment that makes womens' lives difficult as tech workers This is certainly not the case for all trans women. You may not feel like you need to join a community like this, but I don't think it's fair to then speak for/to the trans community saying that none of us should. I've heard things similar to…
I accept that there are differences between trans women, but I believe my description covers a strong majority. I don't speak "for" anyone, of course.
>> It ends up with us being excluded _everywhere_ because of some dubious concept of "socialisation", as if every trans woman has the same experiences such that you can discriminate based on it.
I agree that the concept of "socialisation" is vague and hard to define. The problem is that there are differences in the way men and women behave in a social context and because these differences end up harming women (usually) they need to be addressed. It's easy to see that boys and girls are brought up differently (different toys, different advise, being told off for different things etc) so that's a likely explanation. The alternative is usually a biological explanation about male and female brains generating male and female behaviours. We don't really understand how brains generate any behaviours so I find the biological explanation to be very suspicious. The "socialisation" explanation sounds a lot more straightforward.
Of course there are differences between trans women, in behaviour as well as upbringing. There are differences between men, and between women. Yet, here we are with a tech indudstry that is, in aggregate, unfair or hostile to women, but not to men. You can't predict the behaviour of individuals, but you can make fairly accurate predictions for the kind of behaviours that arise in groups. That's why a community like Leap is needed in the first place.
My concern is that in the case of women-only spaces where trans women are welcome, many trans women will join, responding to their need to belong, which you express and which I feel myself. And that given enough trans women joining, a few of them will eventually display those behavioural traits you can expect from people who grew up like men and that are the traits the community seems to want to keep out.
I agree that feeling excluded from everywhere is harsh and feels extremely unfair. But we can't fix unfair by making more unfair. We can't make the world fair for ourselves by making it more unfair for others. At the end of the day, the way forward is true equality. If trans women are accepted as women, and women are accepted as equal to men (in technology, or anywhere), trans women will not need to feel excluded from anywhere.
But this is not yet the case and I really think that trans women need to give some space to cis women until it is and in order to help make it so.
>> Often!
And thanks for letting me have one, too. My experience is that it happens, but rarely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's seemingly no joy or "chill" at all — just a constant clash of ideas and ideologies. Conflict is ultimately what drives all innovation. (note: I don't mean physical conflict.)
Sure — competition is good for innovation on the corporate or industrial level. But as far as individuals are concerned, I've seen far more interesting and innovative content come from supportive and friendly communities than from tech forums full of shouty dudes.
I expect this to be a controversial comment. I might just be overreacting. If you identify as a woman and are interested in joining Leap, please sign up for our beta here. I'm a trans woman who works in tech. I think it's dangerous to open a community for women to people who "identify as women". For one thing, there are plenty of women who do not "identify as women". For instance, older women may not really know what…
Ultimately, all in-groups are decided by the consent of the majority of members, since everyone will self-select in the end: those who disagree will leave, those who begin to feel excluded will leave, those who feel unwelcome won't join. You can factor in leadership change and continuity as an additional complication, and the names and labels attached to the group will change, but the phenomenon remains the same. Soc…
It took me a long time to start thinking of the effect of my being trans on others around me. For example, when I get hired in a job, is the fact that I'm perceived as a woman giving me a tiny advantage? Is the interviewer thinking it's cool to have a female SE on the team? And does that mean I'm taking some other woman's place? Or is the fact that I'm trans (which is never discussed in interviews) a convenient compromise between a development team that's 100% men and actually going out and hiring more women?
In trans circles, it was my experience that such questions were brushed aside and never given any consideration. Of course I'm a woman, of course I deserve everything a woman deserves and as a woman I'm subject to discrimination in tech anyway (maybe all the companies that didn't even reply to my applications didn't think it's "cool to have a female SE on the team"). That was the general reaction. Or I was just overthinking things (but I do that for a living).
Currently the only people who even broach the subject of how trans womens' rights could affect cis womens' rights are extremely unpleasant transphobic trolls and that's very unfortunate. We've left the conversation about what claiming our rights does to othes entirely up to the very people who want to take our rights away from us. My comment here is in the context of a half-hearted attempt on my part to reclaim this conversation.
I am a bit triggered. This segregation stuff does not make sense to me, it almost feels like prison rules - keep genders/races away from each other because if they interact it will probably be violent. I wondered what would happen if I created a community where the core culture was set by women, and the software and product decisions were also made by women -> This also seems strange to me and counterproductive. If w…
Are you trying to get at the fact that while this is supposed to be empowering to women, it necessarily implies that there are material differences between men and women in how they interact socially? Following this line do we conclude that it is morally inconsistent (with modern "totally equal" egalitarianism) or that it espouses a less popular "equal worth, but not equal treatment" ethic? Or maybe this is just a wa…
Women and men are different -> This justifies different outcomes in certain areas such as tech but promotes diversity due to the fact that they think different and could provide a much needed alternative viewpoint in a homogeneous environment. (this is mostly my perspective)
Women and men are the same -> Then there is a problem with the outcomes being different but the diversity argument goes away because men and women view and interact the same. If this is true we have to forcefully equalize all professions to 50-50. This also doesn't make sense in the context of leap - if men and women are the same why do we need environments that are for one gender or the other?
As far as bootstrapping less masculine communities I'm all for that but the execution of it might turn a bit bizarre when you start letting men in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Measurement is easy. Just look around you. The majority of people working in tech are men. An even larger majority of its leadership is men. Why is this? There are only two possible causes that I can see - genetic, or cultural. The genetic argument is basically that men are, by nature, better at being programmers and leaders than women - that women are inferior. The cultural argument is that there is a social advanta…
"The real reason why there are so fewer women in tech isn’t because of discrimination, harassment or unequal pay (although like I said these factors do exist and need to be fixed). The real reason is that most women clearly aren’t as interested in technology-related work as men are. It’s a choice. And for whatever reasons, more women seem to choose other fields." https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2015/03…
Well- how do you explain the fact that "they're just not interested"? Why is cultural bias not an explanation of this lack of interest? And if it isn't, then what is?
You can't just stop the ball rolling wherever you like. At some point we have to figure out why girls are not into technology as much as boys are and it's very lazy to just dismiss it as "not a girl thing".